Words, words, words, words

How many words are there in English ?

How many does an « average native speaker « know » ?

How many do you really need, and how many can you reasonably hope to learn.?

For “words ” read “word families”

analysed analyser, analysers, analyses , analysing , analysis, analyst, analysts , analytic , analytical, analytically ,

( and also the North American: analyze , analyzed, analyzes, analyzing)

For example, the word “analyse” has 8 members in its word family:

That’s why the “word grammar ” is important _ from verb to noun to plurial to adjective to adding suffixes, prefixes, etc…. But our present question is the number of words.

54,000 words in Websters Third international Dictionary

(1963) NATION and WARING

University-educated native speaker can use VERY roughly - 20,000 words

A 5 year old native speaker just beginning school - 4-5,000 words

Giving an average growth of 1,000 words/year

First good news – gap year students (eg ERASMUS)

have an observed growth of 2,500 words /year

Really good news – there is a very small number of very frequent words !

0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00%100.00%

15851; 97,80%

6000; 89,90%

5000; 88,70%

4000; 86,80%

3000; 84%

2000; 79,70%

1000; 72%

Number of words

; percentage of texts covered

Even better news

French speakers already know a very high number of “rare” English words (because of the common origin of our two languages).

examples: execrable antipathy vilify vitriolic pejorative platitude recalcitrant comprehend

These words are in lists students in the US have to learn for the SAT (university entrance ) exam.

So……… all you have to do to improve your English is to get to know the most frequent words which are not yet part of your active vocabulary

The full references for all the figures given here can be found in the bookVocabulary: Description, Acquisition, and Pedagogy.Schmitt and McCarthy (Eds)Cambridge University Press , 1997

In the chapter by Paul Nation and Robert Waring (pp 6-19)“Vocabulary Size, Text Coverage and Word Lists”

The final slide gives the 300 or so words from the first 1000 which we find our students need the most.

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